The Relation Between Updated Implicit Evaluations and the Trust Game

Abstract

Recent work has shown that people can update their implicit evaluations based on facial trustworthiness. However, do these updated implicit evaluations map onto subsequent decisions? We examined whether implicit evaluations based on faces but updated in light of new behavioral evidence uniquely predict responses in the trust game. Across six studies (N = 2,059), we measured participants’ initial implicit evaluations of a target based on the target’s face and then their updated implicit evaluations based on newly learned behavioral evidence. We then tested whether these updated implicit evaluations uniquely predicted (i.e., beyond explicit evaluations) responses in a hypothetical trust game. Although participants consistently based their initial evaluations on the face and updated their evaluations after learning new diagnostic information, their updated implicit evaluations did not uniquely predict their responses in the trust game. We discuss theoretical considerations in this article.